Three years of blogging!

Can you believe that I've been writing this blog for three years now?  At this time I always say how amazed I am by how much has changed in a year and how much we have done.  Maybe next year I will be amazed by how little has change, I doubt it though, this just seems to be the way things go.  So if you haven't been keeping up, here's a quick summary of the highlights of 2013:

Dec 2012 - we hadn't had any significant rain for 2 months and things were looking dire.  We also bought a house.  Just the house, not the land!

the house we bought

 Jan 2013 - we sold the steers, we sold our Braford weaners, and finally it rained!  300 mL on the Australia Day weekend (25th Jan) and work was cancelled for one day (paid work that it, not farm work).  I made tallow soap.  We got guinea fowl keets.

the guinea fowl keets

the flood

Feb 2013 - we had a holiday in NZ, we got a bore done at Cheslyn Rise and struck water

NZ's Mt Cook

Mar 2013 - our wee Molly cow had her first calf, Monty and while she wasn't overly keen on being milked at first, she produced so much I had to make a cheese a day to keep up!  We were pleased to have trained our first house cow from a calf.  We also hatched a few chickens.

baby chickens

baby Monty

Apr 13 - Planted winter crops, including forage oats

May 13 - we worked on clearing a pad for house and I did lots of knitting.

arm warmers

Jun 13 - we separated Romeo from Bella so she could dry up and he could be weaned and I shared some thoughts about growing food in the sub-tropics

crazy guineas growing up

Jul 13 - after months of planning our house finally moved to Cheslyn Rise!  And we participated in Plastic Free July.

our house on the move

Aug 13 - we butchered Frank(furter) and Bella had her calf Nancy

Baby Nancy

Frank(furter) and the butcher

Sep 13 - planted summer crops and I took you on a tour of the house

these purple potatoes were a pleasant surprise!

Oct 13 - I got another job, so I had 3 weeks off to work on the house and farm with Pete, especially our cattle yards and the steps for the house

our new and old cattle yards

new steps!

 Nov 13 - I started my new job in Brisbane, there during the week and back to Nanango for the weekend. 

Chime (on  right) with Cheryl

Dec 13 - getting used to our new schedule and looking forward to a break!   This last Monday we lost Chime, aged 12, and we all miss her companionship and the little dance she did every morning while she waited for her breakfast.

Chime

How to follow my blog and some stats
Everyone seems to like to use different technology and follow blogs in different ways, so I do try to cater for everyone.

If you have a blog on blogger yourself, the easiest way to follow if to join 250 others and click the follow button.

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I've just recently spent some more time on Pinterest and set up some boards for the blog, I can't promise that it will be as reliable, but I am trying to remember to pin each post, and then you could just follow the boards that you are interested in, along with 105 other followers here.

And finally, if that's not enough for you and you just want a plain old email of every post so you don't miss out, you can enter your email address on the sidebar of the blog through feedburner with 121 others!

This is my 423rd published blog post, I have over 2630 published comments (some of them my own replies) and I usually get around 600-700 pageviews per day, with a total of over 350,000 pageviews since I started.

I told you all that because, I wouldn't bother to write this blog if I didn't have readers, and most of all, commenters, so I wanted to thank you all for reading, following, pinning, liking and commenting and generally joining in with the conversation, that's what keeps this blog going.  That's what makes it fun and worth doing, when I feel like I'm teaching, learning, entertaining and adding something useful to all that information out there on the internet!

Cheryl enjoying a cucumber

My chicken tractors are still the most popular post of all time, now followed by the worm farm, the guinea fowl, the one about me not washing my hair and our wonderful woodfire.

I want to thank you all for your support and sympathy after Chime died, it really helped us to know that we weren't alone in missing our dog.  Thanks for all your kind words.

And now my friends, I think we all deserve a break, its been a big year, and 2014 doesn't look like its going to be any different, I'm going to have a few weeks off, but I think I've left you with plenty of reading.  See you next year for more permaculture, house cows, herbs and knitting!

How was your year and what are you planning to take on next year?